A grueling heatwave resulted in five students being treated for ‘general weakness’ during a sports meet
As a grueling heatwave baked the US south-west this week, there were reports of at least three students being taken to the hospital with heat-related injuries. The injuries highlight the effects of extreme heat on health as the country struggles to grapple with increasingly severe weather amid the climate crisis.
Cal Fire and the fire department in Riverside, east of Los Angeles, reported responding on Tuesday afternoon to a junior high school and high school cross-country meet in the city where they evaluated five juvenile patients for “general weakness”. Three were transported to a hospital for further evaluation, the agency said.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/02/2024 - 14:24
10/02/2024 - 12:43
Event will push for greater transparency and aims to rank AI firms in terms of ability to meet climate goals
World leaders at the next AI summit will focus on the impact on the environment and jobs, including the possibility of ranking the greenest AI companies, it has been announced.
Rating artificial intelligence companies in terms of their ecological impact is among the proposals under consideration, while other areas being looked at include the effect on the labour market, giving all countries access to the technology, and bringing more states under the wing of global AI governance initiatives.
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10/02/2024 - 11:19
Damage to sewage systems and pipes means widespread boil water notices and conservation orders could last weeks
Hurricane Helene left a path of devastation behind, with storm-ravaged areas struggling to access safe water for days because flooding damaged sewage systems, wastewater treatment plants and pipes that deliver drinking water to residents in the affected areas.
Boiling water advisories and water conservation orders are in place in counties in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia.
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10/02/2024 - 11:18
Nuclear waste dump in Cumbria pleaded guilty to leaving data that could threaten national security exposed for four years, says regulator
Sellafield will have to pay almost £400,000 after it pleaded guilty to criminal charges over years of cybersecurity failings at Britain’s most hazardous nuclear site.
The vast nuclear waste dump in Cumbria left information that could threaten national security exposed for four years, according to the industry regulator, which brought the charges. It was also found that 75% of its computer servers were vulnerable to cyber-attack.
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10/02/2024 - 11:00
Proponents say using hallucinogens can spark ‘consciousness shifts’ to inspire climate-friendly behaviors
Thousands gathered for New York City’s annual Climate Week last week to promote climate solutions, from the phaseout of fossil-fuel subsidies to nuclear energy to corporate-led schemes like carbon credits. Others touted a more offbeat potential salve to the crisis: psychedelics.
Under the banner of Psychedelic Climate Week, a group of academics, marketers and advocates gathered for a film on pairing magic mushrooms with music, a discussion on funding ketamine-assisted therapy and a panel on “Balancing Investing & Impact with Climate & Psychedelic Capital”.
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10/02/2024 - 10:00
Employers hiring migrant workers through a federal program must provide food or cooking facilities. But those picking our fresh food have no access to adequate meals
On an August afternoon, Pablo stared down at a foam plate sloshing with flavorless pinto beans and a particularly bad version of huevos a la Mexicana. The simple, usually delicious scramble of eggs, tomatoes, onions and jalapeños is difficult to mess up. But if anyone can find a way to make it unpalatable, it’s the cook at his labor camp.
Soupy eggs are the last thing the 42-year-old from western Mexico wants to eat. But after a 12-hour day harvesting tobacco in the brutal and sometimes deadly summer heat, he must eat – and this was far from the worst meal he’s been given. A few weeks ago, fellow farm workers got sick due to raw and moldy food they were forced to purchase.
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10/02/2024 - 10:00
Camera installed inside a tree hollow in NSW forest to raise awareness of the plight of the endangered possum
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Conservationists call them “ridiculously cute” and “captivating” – and now a live stream offers a global audience the chance to view life inside the hollow for a family of eastern Australia’s largest gliding possums.
The hollow-cam broadcasting live from a tree in south-east NSW offered unlimited greater glider viewing for animal lovers and reality TV tragics.
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10/02/2024 - 07:00
The Idaho camp where Nora Zavala Gallion harvested sugar beets in 1968 felt like a prison because it had been one – for Japanese Americans in the second world war
My mother, Nora Zavala Gallion, was 11 years old when she first set foot inside the farm labor camp in Caldwell, Idaho. It was 1968, and her family had traveled over 2,000 miles (3,218km) by car from Texas’s Rio Grande valley to harvest sugar beets as migrant laborers.
While my family had worked numerous crops across the country for decades, the girl who would become my mother sensed something very different about this location. The camp’s small, dilapidated wooden living quarters were called “barracks” and featured open, latrine-style bathrooms and showers. Somehow, my mother knew this place had a troubling past.
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10/02/2024 - 05:00
Though utilities’ mission is to provide clean water, their trade groups for decades have often fiercely opposed initiatives to improve quality
Several unexpected plaintiffs are behind a legal challenge aiming to kill the Environmental Protection Agency’s groundbreaking new drinking water limits for highly toxic PFAS: the US’s water utilities, represented by their major trade groups.
But utility industry opposition to clean water regulations is nothing new. Though utilities’ mission is to provide the US with clean and safe water, their trade groups have for decades often fiercely opposed initiatives to improve quality.
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10/02/2024 - 01:00
The Austrian capital has been spared the worst of recent flooding. Its experience could be a lesson in how to tackle the climate crisis
Floods are seemingly unavoidable these days. Florida, North Carolina, Nigeria, Tunisia, Mexico, India, Nepal, Vietnam, Poland and Austria are among the places that have experienced flooding in the last month. Those floods should no longer come as much of a surprise. Climate change leads to more frequent and intense rain almost everywhere on the planet, and most infrastructure, from roads and bridges to canals and hydroelectric dams, is simply not built to withstand such extremes.
That’s where Vienna stands out. The floods that have deluged central Europe over the past two weeks caused plenty of disruptions in Lower Austria, including to a newly built train station meant to connect the burgeoning suburbs to the city. But aside from some disruption to Vienna’s otherwise well-functioning subway system, Viennese homes were largely spared. Why? It’s not because Vienna sits on higher ground than the surrounding areas (by and large it does not). The reason the city escaped the worst of the floods is because of human engineering and political foresight dating back to the 1960s, which emerged in response to earlier floods that devastated parts of the city.
Gernot Wagner is a climate economist at Columbia Business School. He is a member of the scientific advisory board of the Wiener Klimarat, Vienna’s climate council
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